"While You Wait For the Others"

This idea resulted in one of the more embarrassingly obvious scenes in High Fidelity (no mean feat), but there is something about those resolute and austere break-up songs that appeals to a romantic concept of brooding masculinity. They capture that moment, where you cut your losses and never look back. See: Bruce Springsteen, ""The One I Love". Grizzly Bear have never been ones for lyrical opacity, but "While You Wait For the Others" could be read as turning the tables on the heartbreaker from "Knife" in that manner, despite being as polite as you might expect from these dudes-- "So I'll ask you kindly to make your way." It's one of the few times that Veckatimest opens up lyrically, but it's also a way back into the record musically after its softer midsection. Most considered "Knife" to be the breakout from Yellow House; I thought it was "Colorado", but here you get a premium hybrid of verse-chorus linearity and the arms-up, loosely bundled drum tumbles and starburst harmonies that brought House to its conclusion. "While You Wait For the Others" proves what Grizzly Bear are capable of when they try and meet the pop-inclined listener halfway.